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9 - Balancing Work and Family Life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Susan D. Holloway
Susan D. Holloway
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Summary

After five years, I was one of the most experienced employees at my workplace.… I didn't want to quit my job when I got married … My boss was a career-oriented single woman. She worked so hard. For her, the job was the first priority. She told me that I should be ready to do overtime even after getting married … Six months after I got married I was asked to be part of a new project team. I was given one condition for joining. I was not supposed to become pregnant for two years … When I was told that I could not get pregnant for two years, I had to reconsider the offer … In the end, I declined the offer. And I ended up quitting the job because I was not feeling comfortable working there.

(Beni, college educated, low self-efficacy mother of three)

Beni, quoted above, is typical of many Japanese women, in that she held a full-time job for several years after finishing school and then left the workplace upon getting married. In fact, Japan is one of the few countries where a graph of women's employment trajectory over their lifetime still forms an “M” shape, with high rates of employment prior to child rearing, a deep dip during the childbearing years, and a rise when the children begin school (Brinton, 2001; Choe, Bumpass, & Tsuya, 2004; Macnaughtan, 2006).

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Chapter
Information
Women and Family in Contemporary Japan , pp. 171 - 195
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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